Egypt's Legitimate Concerns

"The natural resources in Libya represents a very large pool of wealth and funding that will fund terrorist activity not only there but in other parts of the world. You see [ISIS] in Iraq utilizing gasoline and the black market, and in Libya this is a danger that will have a big impact for us."
"We have a struggle against similar organizations that are an offshoot of other terrorist ideologies like the [Muslim] Brotherhood and all these organizations support each other. We have seen terrorists from ISIL move from Iraq and Syria to Sinai, even Nigeria."
"The interconnected nature of all these organizations has to be recognized."
"All of us attempting the eradication of a terrorist organization in one area will need to have greater co-operation in another if we are to comprehensively deal with this threat."
Sameh Shukri, Egyptian foreign minister

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri (photo credit: YouTube screen capture)

On a visit to London Mr. Shukri revealed the fearful suspense of Egyptian authorities in their ongoing and sometimes seemingly futile attempts to push back the tide of violent Islamofascism infesting the Middle East and North Africa. The threat  to Egypt is close enough that even Cairo has seen its stability threatened. Egyptian police and members of its military are constantly targeted in the Sinai. The proliferation of Salafist Bedouin in conflict with the government is an affliction.

That they have been joined by members of Hamas, by Islamic Jihad, by al-Qaeda groups, all of them incited to further attacks by the Muslim Brotherhood, features large in Egypt's overall strategy to protect itself and its citizens. President Abdelfattah el-Sisi took power on the removal of the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi, president before him, in a popular protest against the power taken by the Islamists and their inept administration of the country.

Since then hundreds of Brotherhood officials have been imprisoned, some committed to capital punishment for inciting their followers to riotous violence in cities across Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood has been declared a terrorist group in Egypt, membership outlawed. Now Egypt is pointing out the shared ideological roots of the Muslim Brotherhood infecting violent Islamist movements across the Middle East and North Africa.

What Egypt is not lingering on is that while the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham is financing itself through the sale of oil, just as the Libyan Islamists plan to do themselves, the template was long ago set by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the two leading oil-rich states that have long used their wealth to fund fundamentalist Wahhabist madrassas all over the world. Al-Qaeda grew out of their wealth coffers funding their Islamist activities.

Both Saudi Arabia and Qatar are paying out multiple-billions in establishing Muslim Centres and huge Mosque complexes and maddrasses all over Europe and North America and Australia. What violence cannot accomplish as speedily as it wishes, quiet and determined infiltration will accomplish over time and the fecundity of believers. Which is not necessarily to turn a blind eye to Egypt's pleading for attention.

It has welcomed the British government's decision to commission a report into the scope of the Muslim Brotherhood's activities in Britain and world-wide. And it acknowledges Canada and Britain committing themselves to deploy fighter jets to fly in action with the U.S. carrying out strikes on ISIS in Iraq as Persian Gulf States conduct air strikes with the U.S. in Iraq and Syria, both.

Egypt has itself conducted air strikes in Libya against the Islamists in hopes that the Libyan military will be enabled to defend the country against the gathering threats. But it has its own focus to deal with, on meeting the challenge of the Sinai peninsula where just last week another 33 members of its security forces were killed in attacks by Islamist jihadists determined to turn Egypt into an Islamist state. Charging Hamas with complicity, Egypt has focused once again on the Gaza tunnels.

Egypt looks both inward and outward, trying to secure its centre as well as its flanks. It worries that the Libyan Islamists who have succeeded in capturing and controlling many of the country's cities are eager now to capture the oil fields capable of massive production that will enrich them and further fund their intent to control all of Libya. And in so doing, threaten the stability of Egypt, a neighbour in North Africa.